Environmental news feed

Severe drought and soaring temperatures are causing lakes and rivers in the Amazon to reach dangerously high temperatures, threatening species like the Amazon river dolphin, according to a recent study’s preprint. In 2023, the Amazon experienced its worst drought in recorded history, coupled with the hottest dry season on record. The extreme climate caused the

A new study finds that the potential for carbon capture and storage is much more limited, by a factor of five or six, than the capacity projected by the United Nations to fight climate change. The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates a maximum of 30 gigatons of carbon dioxide can be trapped underground

In a defining moment for the rights of Indigenous peoples in Peru, 37 land titles were secured in the Amazon in record time, from June 2023 to May 2024. This is not only a remarkable land rights victory for the region, but it also marks a significant step towards addressing climate change, reclaiming Indigenous peoples’

When Manuel Lopes-Lima set out to survey aquatic biodiversity on the Corubal River in 2022, he’d set his expectations very low. The river that straddles the West African nations of Guinea and Guinea-Bissau was, after all, very remote and grossly understudied. Two expeditions later, the story has turned on its heels. With the help of

In January 2023, the federal government of the United States issued landmark decisions affecting two controversial projects to exploit mineral resources on public lands. One was an industrial-scale copper mine, the Pebble Mine in south central Alaska, and oil drilling program in the Willow Concessions on the North Slope of Alaska. The Environmental Protection Agency

Cercarbono, a Colombia-based certifier of carbon projects, has approved a methodology that can be used to generate voluntary biodiversity credits, an emerging finance scheme aimed at supporting biodiversity conservation. This methodology, developed by U.S.-based company Savimbo in collaboration with the Indigenous peoples and local communities in Colombia’s Amazon, is the first of its kind to be

KATHMANDU — Tightly coiled fern plants with a distinctive appearance emerge amid the sal tree undergrowth as the monsoon rains fall on Nepal’s fertile floodplains. Due to its resemblance to the violin scroll, the plant is known as the “fiddle-head fern,” locally called niuro. Soon, the fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris) will travel to different parts of

Bhutan’s journey into tourism began in 1974, when the country opened its doors to package tourists, prioritizing sustainable growth and development. Today, with more than 70% forest cover safeguarded by a vast network of protected areas, Bhutan aspires to become a leading ecotourism destination, guided by the national tourism policy of “high-value, low-volume.” But there

LUBOK PUSAKA, Indonesia — Jaharuddin, 50, sits deep in thought in his living room in Lubok Pusaka village, in Indonesia’s Aceh province, smoking a cigarette and staring out the door. On his porch, piles of corn he harvested two before lie scattered, waiting to be sold. For decades, corn has been Jaharuddin’s main source of

Surangel S. Whipps Jr., president of the tiny Pacific island nation of Palau, wants more countries to join him in calling for a moratorium on deep-sea mining. This prospective industry, also called seabed mining, aims to extract sought-after minerals like copper, cobalt and rare earth metals from the deep seabed. As global interest in deep-sea

ABIDJAN — Environment ministers from across Africa are meeting in Côte d’Ivoire this week to discuss urgent challenges and strengthen ambition and action against land degradation, desertification and climate change on the continent. The theme of the 10th special session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) is “Raising Africa’s ambition to reduce

River levels in parts of the Brazilian Amazon are even lower than in 2023, when the region experienced its worst drought.

Pumas are unlikely to recolonize much of their historical range in the eastern U.S., a new study finds. It’s not a lack of habitat or food keeping out the pumas, also known as cougars or mountain lions. It’s the highways. Historically, pumas (Puma concolor) ranged coast to coast across nearly all of the Americas, stretching

As a young student, Aristide Kamla had “big plans” when he traveled to Lake Ossa in Cameroon to conduct his master’s degree fieldwork with the little-known African manatee. He was hoping for a manatee count and a management plan to come out of the expedition on the roughly 4,000-hectare (10,000-acre) lake. But securing grants was difficult

JAKARTA — A controversial zinc-and-lead mine being developed on the Indonesian island of Sumatra has hit a roadblock after the country’s Supreme Court ordered the revocation of its environmental permit. In its Aug. 12 ruling, the court upheld a lower court’s earlier decision that the environmental permit should never have been issued in the first

PALEMBANG/PANDEGLANG, Indonesia — Authorities in Indonesia are investigating possible links between a recent bust of rhino horns for sale and a killing spree of Javan rhinos still being uncovered in court. Police working with agents from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry announced on Aug. 27 the arrest of a 60-year-old man in Palembang, South

Longline fishing for tuna will remain closed in the Maldives, the island country’s president announced on Aug. 29. The decision came after local fishers, conservation NGOs and scientists protested against plans by the administration of President Mohamed Muizzu to reopen longline fisheries for yellowfin tuna and bigeye tuna. Longline fishing has been banned in the

STUNG TRENG, Cambodia — Rain poured down in torrential sheets as Ouk Mao guided reporters through the winding dirt tracks that were, in August, rutted with deep trenches of mud and rainwater as Cambodia’s wet season began in earnest. Thunder cracked across the largely flat plains of Stung Treng province, in Cambodia’s northeast, and Mao joked

The majority of foreign visitors, and even most Swedish inhabitants, consider their country to be one that values nature. The image is also continually used in popular culture, for example, in the most recent Netflix adaptation of renowned author Astrid Lindgren’s novel Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter, in which stunning forests full of animals are shown.

A surge in fires across Brazil’s São Paulo state has killed three people and injured dozens, leading experts to suspect an orchestrated arson campaign. Satellite images from Aug. 23 showed an initial 25 fire hotspots jumping to 1,886 in the span of just 90 minutes. The three people who died were all trying to fight

The Forest Stewardship Council has suspended its certification of a controversial logging company in the Peruvian Amazon accused of encroaching on the traditional territory of the Mashco Piro, an Indigenous group that lives in voluntary isolation. The move on Aug. 30 by the FSC, the world’s leading certifier of sustainable forestry products, followed reports indicating that

Swimming with giant manta rays (Mobula birostris) feels like an underwater dance. Their slow, rhythmic movements are astonishing to Madalena Pereira Cabral. She describes her dives alongside manta rays, which she says she believes are among the most elegant, graceful and intelligent animals in the ocean. “It is also a very mysterious and interesting species

Fireflies use their characteristic flashing signals to find and attract mates. It’s a courtship ritual that can seem magical on a warm summer evening. However, for orb weaver spiders, these displays are more than just a spectacle — the spiders can manipulate the light signals of male fireflies, turning them into unwitting lures to attract

Until recently, the Hanoi-based nonprofit where Hưng works as a legal advocate distributed its research online, freely circulating information it intended to support policies on climate change and other environment issues. Now, Hưng says, such reports — many of them funded by international organizations— are only circulated internally among trusted working partners. Hưng (not his

Nations across the globe are trialing “rights of nature” laws and “legal personhood” for various ecosystems and a range of reasons, from Indigenous reconciliation to biodiversity protection. While these two concepts are closely related, they have some key differences. Podcast guest Viktoria Kahui discusses what distinguishes them and how they’ve been used for conservation, while

For the last two decades, countries around the world have been in a frenzy to earmark large swaths of their lands and waters as protected areas to meet the ambitious “30 by 30” target that calls for 30% of Earth’s land and seas to be legally protected by 2030. Governments are expanding existing protected areas

Climate change is turning the humid rainforest of the western Amazon into an ecosystem nearly 30 times more prone to fire, according to the 2023-2024 State of Wildfires report. The study shows that between March 2023 and February 2024, rising temperatures, reduced rainfall, drier air and less resilient forests set up the region for a

Every year, between November and February, the golden-cheeked warbler makes its way down from the U.S. state of Texas to Central America. But as it travels to find refuge from the winter, this tiny, endangered bird, Setophaga chrysoparia, with its bright-yellow cheeks and a buzzing song, seems unable to evade habitat loss. More than 90%

Growing up in the village of Domboshava in central Zimbabwe, Edwin Tambara, the African Wildlife Foundation’s director of global leadership, recalls how the surrounding Miombo woodland was a pharmacy, hardware store and supermarket, all rolled into one. “You get a cough or sneeze or you have a headache, I remember my grandmother would just say,

Fancy a taste of your own toenails? That’s what vendors in Vietnam or China could say when offering powdered rhino horn. This coveted “trophy” is made up of keratin, the same structural protein as human nails and hair. And a new study in Scientific Reports finds it about as nutritious, despite claims to the contrary,

In the last few years in mid-western Bangladesh, the trend of planting different types of fruit orchards, like mango, lychee and papaya, has gone up in three districts together commonly known as the High Barind Tract — Rajshahi, Chapai Nawabganj and Naogaon. “Transforming the land from rice and wheat fields to orchards is the easiest

A beluga whale nicknamed Hvaldimir, who was initially suspected of being a Russian spy, was found dead on Aug. 31, according to Norwegian media. Hvaldimir’s body was first spotted by a father and son who were out fishing for mackerel near the port town of Risavika in southwestern Norway. “This morning, after receiving a sighting